The legions of Rome’s Republic and Empire are popularly regarded as the greatest military
force of antiquity, but not just for their proficiency in the open field. By using their
engineering and construction abilities as another weapon against their enemies, the
Roman army became one of the most effective siege armies in the history of the world.
Taking a city or a fortress can demoralise the enemy into an early capitulation, while
becoming bogged down before the walls of an enemy settlement can stall a whole war effort.
The importance of ancient siege warfare makes it critical that we analyse how and why the
Romans were so competent at it, despite preferring to settle their wars in battle.
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your journey! At the end of the fourth century BC, two drastically
different approaches to siege warfare were being practiced in separate parts of the Mediterranean.
In 306BC, the eastern Mediterranean world was being terrorised by the sophisticated
siegecraft of Demetrius Poliorcetes - or Demetrius ‘the besieger’. Most notable was the use
of massive siege towers known as helepoleis’, during his attempts to take Salamis and Rhodes.
His methods were a culmination of centuries worth of development by Greek and Macedonian
engineers, supported by kings such as Philip II of Macedon. Further west, the embryonic
Roman Republic was still only tiny, and was in 306BC embroiled in a war against their
Samnite neighbors to the south. In comparison to the comparatively sophisticated siegecraft
of Demetrius and his fellow diadochi, Roman methodology at this point was far more simple
- get up the walls with ladders and storm the place, as they did at the Siege of Silvium.
However, Roman encounters during the third century BC with Carthaginian and Macedonian
siege tactics demonstrated their effectiveness to the ever-pragmatic Republic. Gradually,
the Romans began to adopt and adapt more advanced methods of siegecraft, and we shall attempt
to discuss them, starting with ranged artillery.
While light torsion artillery was used to great effect by the Romans in battle on occasion,
it was far more common to see such contraptions utilised during sieges. Two varieties of ranged
machines were routinely employed against targets: the one-armed onager and the two-armed ballista.
The onager - or ‘wild ass’, looked like a later medieval mangonel and was named for
its powerful kickback upon firing. On one occasion, Ammianus even states that one of
these devices killed a crewman in this way when it misfired. The device itself possessed
a single, upright arm which was cranked back and then fired, being capable of throwing
a stone with considerable force using the tension of twisted ropes or springs. More
commonly used by the Romans were their two-armed ballistae - a oversized crossbow-like artillery
piece capable of firing stones and what were essentially giant crossbow bolts. Both an
individual ballistae and its ammunition could vary in size all the way from portable sized
units called scorpions to massive lance-throwers. Byzantine historian Procopius described the
frightening capacity of these weapons. He tells us that a ballista bolt once penetrated
the chest armour and body of a Gothic soldier, who was then pinned against a tree by the
sheer force exerted by the projectile. Although these artillery units were without doubt powerful,
they were unable to breach well-constructed and substantial earthen or stone walls, contrary
to the popular medieval and modern conceptions of artillery.
Instead, they were primarily used as suppression fire anti-personnel devices - a secondary
means of attack while the main siegeworks were prepared. At Jerusalem in AD70 for example,
Roman artillerists loosed stones and bolts toward the defenders on the walls in order
to give cover to their advancing legionary comrades, while they stormed the breach around
the city’s western gate. This had the secondary impact of also neutralizing the defender’s
artillery, which was consequently rendered unusable. The late Roman writer Vegetius tells
us that each century of 80 men was ideally to be armed with a scorpion - otherwise known
as a carroballista, while each cohort which the centuries comprised were to possess a
larger ballista. This was probably only a base allotment, and it is likely that these
figures would be increased or decreased based upon the practical needs of the military formations
in question. In addition, these numbers probably changed throughout Roman history as doctrines
gradually changed. The troops who actually operated the artillery were ordinary soldiers
- possibly volunteers, drawn from the ranks, rather than specially employed artillerists.
Therefore, the quality of crews varied between different legions. The Jewish-Roman writer
Josephus tells us that of the Roman formations subduing the Great Jewish Revolt, the men
of legio X Fretensis were the most expert at siegecraft.
Since ancient Roman artillery was mostly incapable of breaching strong walls or other fortifications,
other means had to be employed to do so. The most simple and rudimentary of these methods
was by using pickaxes, crowbars and other manual tools to detach stones and undermine
specific points in enemy defences. Interestingly, this is where we most often see use of the
Roman defensive testudo formation in history. An overlapping layer of shields was used in
order to protect a group of legionaries from projectiles as they approached enemy walls
or retreated from them. During one siege in the civil war of AD69, a group of defenders
grew so desperate in their attempts to break an enemy testudo that they pushed one of their
own catapults off the wall to crush it. This succeeded in flattening the attacking legionaries,
but also tore down a section of their own wall, leading to a breach. The Romans, just
like empires since ancient Assyria or perhaps even earlier, used battering rams as one of
the primary methods to knock holes through walls. Engineers would construct massive devices,
usually mounted in wheeled sheds known as ram-tortoises, which served the same purpose
as the testudo but on a larger scale - to protect its crew from missiles. The battering
ram itself was a long beam of wood - perhaps fir or mountain ash, bound with thick ropes
to prevent it from splitting under the pressure. The ram’s head was made of iron and was
traditionally shaped to resemble the head and horns of a butting ram.
Alternatives to breaching through an enemy wall was going either under or over it, or
both.a Below the wall, Roman sappers could dig tunnels underneath enemy fortifications,
which were then filled with supports and combustible material. When the time was right, the combustibles
would be ignited and the supports removed, collapsing the tunnel and hopefully bringing
down a section of the wall with it. If this was not possible, the only option left was
to get over the wall and secure them by storm - the traditional Roman way. This was the
most outwardly deadly way of breaking the defence of a fortification, during which assaulting
troops using scaling ladders would attempt to get atop the walls. This required careful
judgement to ensure that ladders being used were of a sufficient length and to ensure
that casualties wouldn’t be too catastrophic for no gain. Exposed as the were when climbing
the ladders, Roman soldiers were exposed to missiles of all kinds - arrows, stones, javelins
and others. Moreover, the ladders themselves could easily be overturned or broken, sending
the legionaries tumbling back to earth. Even if a small unit of troops managed to establish
a bridgehead on the walls, reinforcements could only ascend to join them slowly. Therefore,
it was relatively common for defenders to concentrate in numbers, attack and push the
Romans away. A more effective, but more high maintenance method of surmounting the walls
was offered by the construction of siege towers, they could often lower a drawbridge onto the
ramparts, permitting men to approach the wall in cover and cross into it in larger numbers.
Siege towers in the Roman world developed over time, but in a different manner to those
of their Greek counterparts. For the most part, the guiding principle of military engineering
in the Roman world was functionality above all, and the manufacture of siege towers was
no exception. In contrast, the Hellenistic fascination was with awesome size and a spectacular
nature, often disregarding their practicality to an extent. That being said, initial Roman
use of siege towers were blundered to an almost comic degree. When they were sieging a Greek
town named Atrax during the Macedonian Wars, their inexperience with heavy machinery led
to one of their siege towers getting stuck in a rut in the ground and almost falling
over. By the mid first century AD however, Roman siege towers had been all but perfected,
and Vegetius gives us a comprehensive description of how they might have appeared. For stability,
taller towers would require wider base dimensions - 30, 40 or 50 feet squared, for example.
The heights of these towers were not excessive, and ten-story structures are recorded in the
time of Caesar. During the Great Jewish Revolts and the sieges at Jerusalem and Masada, siege
engines as large as 87 feet are mentioned by Josephus. On the bottom level of Vegetius’
siege towers was a battering ram, a boarding bridge - or exostra was present on the mid-level
while a fighting platform for archers and spearmen was on top, whose task was to provide
covering fire.
To accomplish their function, siege towers and other wall-breaking engines would have
to get to the fortification, and this was often the hardest part of the job. How did
the Romans facilitate the movements of their engines? Uneven landscapes and sophisticated
outer defences were dealt with by simply burying them beneath a wide embankment or siege ramp
known as an agger. To create these makeshift embankments, thousands of tonnes of earth
and rubble would be piled up, beginning some distance from the would-be victim at ground
level and gradually moving higher and closer. Larger aggers often required bracing at the
sides by timber shoring, so that the debris would not just flow out to the edges. These
siegeworks could be absolutely incredible in scale, rivalling Alexander the Great’s
construction of the causeway during his siege of Tyre. At Avaricum in 52BC, Caesar built
an agger which eventually reached a mammoth 80 feet tall and 330 feet wide. It was able
to accomodate two siege towers side-by-side to serve as protection for the construction
crew, but was primarily made for the purpose of being a staging area for a mass legionary
assault upon completion. We do not have to rely entirely on ancient writings for details
on these huge works of engineering. On the shores of the Dead Sea, the remnants of a
massive Roman era agger used by the troops of legio X Fretensis to reach the walls of
Masada can be seen. It is worth noting that this structure was unusually steep, due to
the necessity of that specific siege. Those Roman soldiers undertaking such large-scale
movements of earth required extensive protection from enemy fire, which was accomplished mainly
by the use of two different types of shielding - the vinea and the pluteus. The Vinea was
a light, open ended timber structure with wicker sides, a sloped, boarded roof and a
fireproof covering. They were arranged end to end, and were capable of forming long corridors
which workers could travel through. Meanwhile, The Pluteus was a more mobile, but still large
convex wicker shield with an arched roof, a triangular base and while, serving as frontal
protection for soldiers emerging from the vinea.
Unfortunately, after all of this was done, legionaries would often be so furious at the
fact that they had been besieging a city for so long, or that they had lost comrades in
the fight, that the sacking would be terrible. Tens of thousands of people could be killed
and their property seized as loot, taken as a reward by the legionaries. Though generals
would sanction this kind of behavior, it was just as common for them to lose control of
the soldiers while they had their way with the settlement which had been taken by siege.
If the defenders opened the gates before a siege became necessary, however, it was common
to allow a peaceful surrender.
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